Ain't I a Worker?!: Gendered Labor and the Worker as Political Subject in Workers' Center Organizing

The idea of labor precarity is now prominent in so-called postindustrial contexts, as nonstandard work has come to dominate more industries and cover a wide range of jobs. But precarious work is hardly new; vulnerable work has been and remains a common condition, especially for women, migrants, and people of color. These precarious workers are the target of grassroots labor organizers, such as workers' centers, which are important sites for understanding notions of work and family. Through an examination of workers' center organizing in the early 2000s in New York City, this paper shows how community organizers, including women workers in Chinatown, rethought the interplay between productive paid work and reproductive care work. This led to the reevaluation of the category of family in relation to work and to organizing. These developments led organizers to broaden the concept of work, and to reconfigure the worker as a political subject always embedded in overlapping social fields.